Building Theory

Although the building was the ultimate goal of the education at the
Bauhaus right from the start when building theory was included in the
curriculum by Walter Gropius, a department of architecture was not set up at
the Bauhaus until 1927 in Dessau. Until then, the students’ participation in projects
took place in the private architecture office of Walter Gropius. Under the
second Bauhaus director, Hannes Meyer, building theory became one of the
central components of education at the Bauhaus. Under the last director, Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus was transformed into an academy of architecture and
the workshops and art subjects became subordinate.

The statement “The ultimate goal of all artistic activity is the
building” was included in the Bauhaus programme of 1919. However, it was only
possible to develop a regular course of study for architects from 1927 on. Until
then, the students gained their experience in architecture in the private
architecture office of Walter Gropius. Gropius and Adolf Meyer gave courses on
architectural design and organised planning seminars in cooperation with the
building trades school in Weimar. Through Gropius’s office, all of the Bauhaus
workshops were included in the design of buildings including Sommerfeld House
in Berlin in 1920/21, the renovation of the municipal theatre in Jena in
1921/22 and the prototype Haus am Horn in Weimar in 1923. Plans for a Bauhaus housing
estate remained unrealised in Weimar due to the problematic economic situation.
Using methods that were sometimes new and oriented towards typologies and
standardisation, they designed not only a new architecture but also a new way
of life.

The buildings designed in Gropius’s office and realised from 1925 –
especially the Bauhaus Building and the Masters’ Houses – characterise the
situation during the Dessau years. In 1927, Walter Gropius offered the Swiss
architect Hannes Meyer the opportunity to take charge of the department of architecture.
That same year, Meyer began developing his theory, which united all the architecture-related
subjects – draughtsmanship, design, construction, project planning and town planning.
For both Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer, architecture essentially meant the
“design of life processes”.

Meyer went beyond Gropius’s “fundamental research”, which he thought was
too fixated on the object. Using scientific methods, he analysed the lifestyle
patterns of the future residents of a settlement or house and integrated biological
and climatic on-site studies in the design process. Students from the various
academic years worked together in so-called vertical brigades on the design and
realisation of buildings such as the Laubenganghäuser (Balcony Access Houses) in Dessau or the Federal
School of the German Trade Unions (ADGB) in Bernau near Berlin. The teachers in
the architecture department included Carl Fieger, the engineer Friedrich Köhn,
Hans Wittwer, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Anton Brenner, Alcar Rudelt and Mart Stam.

The third Bauhaus director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, streamlined teaching
into a study system that offered little leeway for experimentation. The Bauhaus
was now primarily attended by students who already had other degrees and therefore
became a “university for the second degree” (Ch. Wolsdorff). Mies van der
Rohe‘s teaching put the focus on plans for the design of individual houses, where
the form was not defined by Gropius’s “fundamental research” or by the
requirement of meeting the “people’s needs” (Hannes Meyer). Instead, it aimed
for a “spatial execution of spiritual decisions” (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) governed
by aesthetic perfection.